Week of January 9th to 13th

Happy New Year everyone!! 

It’s 2012, and the holidays are over, and that means back to the grind.

Monday

Public holiday in Japan.

Tuesday

Well. Here we go again. Today I was supposed to have 5 classes. FIVE. On Friday, I went over to ask Mizushima-sensei if he minded cutting 4^th period with 3-2, since they basically had an extra class over everybody else and I didn’t wanna have to prepare an extra music lesson just for them (you wouldn’t think, but those things take AGES), and I figured that since he is constantly cancelling his classes with me, he couldn’t say much about it. Well, he seemed really surprised, but said fine, and sure enough, took the opportunity to tell me to not come to 2-3 during 3^rd period, because they had to prepare for the tests on Wednesday.  Fair enough, that still left me with 2-2 and 2-1 with Shigeki for 1^st and 2^nd period, and then 3-1 in the afternoon 6^th period. Nice cozy little day with not too much, not too little free time.

So I show up this morning, print my ninensei lesson, and then when Shigeki-sensei finally makes an appearance in the staffroom (5 minutes before class) I go “oh, we have 2-2 now and 2-1 right after, right?” and he goes “aaaaah *teeth sucking sorry….” and there goes my morning.

So I ended up having one class today, which involved watching a movie for 40 out of the 50 minutes of lesson time. We finished watching Hairspray, and like 90% of all the students had “lost” their papers, which made me pretty cranky, and made us start late cuz Shigeki sensei went down to photocopy more. Furthermore, at the end of the class, he proceeded to translate every single question into Japanese, which made me want to pull my hair out, but I was too tired to give a fuck. So let me recap, we watched the movie with subtitles, and then he translates all the questions… and the point of this ENGLISH activity was??? Urgh… at least he’s only a few years away from retirement… *facepalm*

Thursday

Bad class with 2-4…. Masaya was apparently reliving his 3^rd year of existence when he decided that it would be funny to repeat every single thing I said *sigh* the that was followed by a bad class with 3-4, but what was I expecting, really?

One funny thing that happened was Mao and Minami, chasing me down the hallway to ask what “yeah man!” meant. Except that Minami kept saying “yemen” for the first 5 minutes and I had NO idea what she was trying to say. lol. they followed this by asking me what air quotation meant, and then asking what was “XOXO”. I think they’ve started watching gossip girl… I told them to come ask me after lunch, which they did. and oh boy, trying to explain air quotations to kids who can barely understand English, in a country that doesn’t understand sarcasm was FUN! -_- but nevermind, I like those kiddies. Afterwards, I asked Minami if she liked gyaru magazines cuz I was cleaning my house and could give her some old ones and she said I was “gyappu”. I had never heard that word before and Mao tried to explain it to me, and apparently it’s being something that you don’t look like you are? like living a double life or having a secret identity. lol. Then as I was walking back into the staffroom she shouted at me “Vanessa is secret gyaru on weekend!”  well… not so secret anymore, I guess!

Friday

In 1-6 Shoki kept removing hair from my pants. lol. Wait, that sounds wrong. I should probably mention that I shed my hair like a dog, and you can usually find long strands of blond hair all over my clothes at any given time. Shoki, this 3 feet tall little kid with a constant smirk like he is soooooo up to no good, has decided that his favorite thing to do now is to remove the hair he can spot on my clothes… weird? yup. but at least it’s entertaining for the other kids in class :p Yuuya was annoying, but actually did the test and the game earnestly. I guess he was in a good mood. He also got a really horrible haircut. I wonder if his mom cut it, cuz it looks really bad. lol.

1-4 boys were arm wrestling with Tatsuki when I walked in (the little kid who is kinda “slow” and “spaced” and kinda the class mascot) but the hilarious thing was that he was beating all of them (with his usual dazed face). Little baby Hideaki kept stealing glances at me the whole class and then doing this shy-giggle-thing and hiding when I looked back. He is suffering from the same attention disease as Ayumu and Masaya in 2^nd grade… Towards the end, Atsuhiro kept saying that Yuka-sensei looked like she didn’t have a boyfriend. lol. Oh and I went to pester Akira-chan a bit and called him “Akira-chan” loudly in front of all his friends and went “I like Akira-chan cuz he’s so cuuuute!” and poked his cheek, and they all fell over themselves laughing, saying “she says she LIKES you!” “you’re kawaii!!!! Akira-chan kawaii!” and just dying… I’m a bad teacher.

Week of November 28th to Dec 2nd

Monday

First period was 1-6 and it was fun. Yuka-sensei has this “pointer” thingie from the 100yen shop that’s basically a stick with a squishy cat paw at the top. Both the kids and I LOVE the cat paw and always want to play with it… in fact, Fumiya and I have really bonded over our love of the cat paw… Fumiya is this really fat, jolly kid who now sits in the first row. So, most of the class was spent with me waving the cat paw at him, and him trying to grab it. lol.

In 2-4 Masaya was being a horrible little shit again… although there was that one funny moment where I made big eyes at him and he went “hey, are you wearing color contacts?” and it just made me laugh because, with the amount of staring at me that he does, you would think he’d have realized by now my eyes are actually blue…

In class with 3-1, Minoru (who is a really diligent kid, really good at English) and Seiya (who is a brat who cares more about his hair than anything else – especially English) were swapping this little paper around, writing notes to each other. When I tried to grab for it, they of course wouldn’t let me, but I managed to see that they were writing questions to each other… in English!!! Minoru had written “do you have a girlfriend?” and Seiya answered “yes, I do”. lol. WTF?!! Well, I guess they were practicing English in a way that was more entertaining to them, but still, I was kinda baffled. More baffling even is that they kept at it for pretty much the whole class. The rest of the class involved me and Minami talking about the Korean drama “You’re Beautiful”; explaining to the boy in front of her (to his great interest) how you made “sculpt” gel nails; and telling Yuta that I was 18 and having him believe me. lol. I told him that I was a genius and had gone straight from elementary school to university and he was like “really?” lol. When he realized we were making fun of him he went “me too, me too. I didn’t go to high school or junior high school” and the other kid laughed at him in Japanese going “then what are you doing here?!” Fun times. The mood of the classroom was really good and genki, but they were pretty much all doing anything but the work they were supposed to be doing. Oh well!

Tuesday

Today I had 1-7 first period, and it felt like I hadn’t seen them in ages and they were like “Vanessa, yaaaay!!” when I walked in which was sweet. They were super genki the whole time… Oh! One funny thing that happened was that, we were doing possessives today, and they had to ask each other “do you have XX’s bag?” or similar questions, and there is this kid whose name is “Shu” and so when his group realized that saying “Shu’s” sounded like “shoes”, that’s ALL they were asking for the whole duration of the game. “Do you have Shu-zuuuu bag? hat? car?” and then they would all break into fits of giggles. Cuteness.

Then I had regular English with 3-5, and it was kinda funny cuz Kazuma was NOT sleeping. He had his head on the desk, and TRIED to sleep, but he would always go back and open his eyes and just look around at whatever was going on. It cracked me up because obviously he is trying to stick to his bad boy image or “I don’t give a shit”, but he was super awake. Just sit up, kid. I even went to talk to him for a bit and he was all chipper (even though he kept making the girl next to him translate for him) and then he played the game earnestly with Ryohei afterwards *shakes head* Oh and, I also noticed that the girl who looks like Angela Aki (forgot her name, bad me) is dating the boy next to her (tall lanky kid called Shusuke. Smart kid too) because she had purikura of the two of them stuck to her pencilcase… Awww, cute. But seriously, what’s with all these 3^rd grader couples of kids who are sitting next to each other?? That’s 3 now! (That I know of…)

Aaaaaaaand, I guess that’s it. I had 3-2 and 2-6 scheduled, but as usual, Mizushima-sensei cancelled his classes with me, and surprisingly, so did Hasegawa sensei. Apparently, those big regional tests we’re having on Thursday have everyone freaking out. I was a bit bummed to miss my weekly class with 3-2, but oh well…

Wednesday

First period was 1-1 and they were their usual genki selves. There is this one tiny little boy called Fumiya in that class, who showed up to school this morning wearing a snow hat. Now I know that, this being Japan and all, there is NO WAY that the teachers would let him wander around with a hat on just because he was cold, so I figured something must be seriously wrong. So I asked Aoshima-sensei and he told me the kid had surgery for a brain tumor!! And of course his hair fell off cuz of chemo or some other treatment… but apparently now he’s fine :/ Poor baby! Well, he seemed genki enough during class… When we were playing the game, he kept wandering round and round the classroom, and when I assigned him to this group of boys, he refused to play with them, and kept wandering, til I realized he just wanted to be with his friends who were in another (already complete) group, so I was like “ok, fine, you guys can be 6!” and he seemed pretty chipper. There was another girl I tried to put in another group who were only 4, and she completely refused to move and just sat there the whole time. Actually, she always does that, she’s like a freakin’ zombie and never does anything and whenever they play group games I always have to go coax something out of her cuz she completely kills the mood of whatever group she’s in… I mean, I get being an outcast and all, but you could at least TRY. I really have no pity for her at all because it seems to me that she puts herself in this situation. The kids in this class are actually really sweet and warm, and when we do have group things, they usually try to include her and coax her to play along and she just does nothing. Big fail.

Damn, what is it today with kids who don’t wanna play?! There was another shy girl in 1-3 who refused to go into a group. I suggested her two different groups of girls to go with. Even asked one “is it ok if she plays with you” and they nodded yes, and I pushed her over – like physically, with my hands to her back – and she just planted her feet on the ground and refused to move, staring blankly into space. She didn’t even go back to her seat to sit, she just stood there in that one spot for the entire time. Even Aoshima-sensei tried to get her to go, a bit later, but to no avail. Seriously. The rest of them enjoyed the game pretty well, with one usual group of boys waaaaay more eager than the rest, who played like 3 times to everybody’s 1… my little Dinosaur boy seemed a bit out of it though, he was kinda just wandering around.

Oh and btw, on my way back from 1-1 in the morning, I ran into Taisei (3-6) who just randomly started blabbering at me in Japanese “It’s cold… it’s really cold” (I agreed, but actually today is super hot… like almost 20C) followed by “my stomach aches, I don’t feel well…” and he just kept blathering on as he went up the stairs… lol. It was sooo random. haha. I guess he’s sick cuz that’s really kinda out of character for him.

Thursday

Teeeeeests!

Friday

I guess that I forgot to write anything for that day… 

Ooooh, I remember! I had 4 classes back to back in the morning that day, and I was gonna leave early in the afternoon cuz I was going to Tokyo for the weekend, and then, in the staffroom around 1:45pm… like seriously 10 MINUTES before I was gonna leave… Aoshima-sensei comes running up to my desk – panting – and goes “Vanessa, we have class now. Today is B week” and I’m like “what?!?!” all panicky. I was not a happy camper. first of all, I’d already had classes all morning with no breaks (which if you don’t know, is really tiring… most “real” teachers never have anything like that on their schedule…), second of all, I’m just a lowly ALT so you would *think* that if I didn’t show up, the teacher would either be glad, or just let it slide and tell me after. but no, there he was standing in front of me, and ushering me back to class. I was also REALLY pissed off mostly because going to class meant I would leave school a good 30 minutes after I had planned, and alter all my plans and make me have to rush to catch the bus in time. Thanks Aoshima-sensei!! :(

anyhoo… I ended up making the bus on time and having a wonderful weekend in Tokyo, so I guess all is forgiven… :p

Week of November 21st to 25th

Monday

Was test day, so nothing too exciting happened.

Tuesday

Backstreet Boys lesson for sentaku with 3-2 and 3-1. The latter was surprisingly uber genki, even though it was 6^th period. Possibly because class was a nice break from the tests they’ve been having recently. Minami and co kept going on and on about my nails and exte, and about our karaoke date. Ayumi from 3-2 was in love with Brian, and a bunch of the kids from both class were like “are they really foreigners??” (referring to the BSB pics I was passing around) “some of them look Japanese”… :/

Wednesday

Holiday! Migraine! Joy!

Thursday

Hairspray lesson with 3-4 and 3-5… Went down better than expected with my two not-so-favorite groups… I was so sick in the morning I “skipped” 2-4 with Shigeki… he never noticed.

Friday

First period was 1-6, which was fine, and fun, except that Yuuya from 1-6 refused to do the test, which left me a bit confused because how would he not know at least one answer??? He was just trying to be a dick. He is usually so genki, so that made me sad.

Then I had 1-4 right after, who cheered a bit when I walked in, so that made me happy.  The boys in 1-4 ALL had like super messed-up hair. wtf. Baby Hideaki was pretending to have his eyes closed during mokuso and then giggling like an idiot and he saw I’d caught him. On the way back, I ran into Soma and his little posse, and they stayed to walk with me and chat shyly and were SO stoked when I grabbed their hands to demonstrate my human-heater powers. lol.

Then Mizushima-sensei cancelled our class with 2-5. Dunno why I’m surprised really… must be like a month or something since I’ve seen those kids!

Week of November 14th to 18th

Sooorry! This is very very retroactive… I wrote it the week it was happening, obviously, but then I never had time to edit it, and then I forgot about it. Plus, I thought no one was reading this blog :p  It wasn’t until I met up with a friend over the holidays, and she told me “oh yeah! I love your blog and I showed it to all my coworkers and they love it too!” that I was like “huh… people actually read it?!” lol. So I figured I should get off my butt and start it up again. And, since there’s no class until next week, well, you’ll have this (plus one more post) to keep you company…

I’m also considering changing the format a bit, and instead of doing a dutiful weekly diary, just do one-off posts with interesting things that happened or that I’ve noticed…

Anyways, that’s enough blabber for now… read on!!

Monday.

I was lazy and didn’t write it down and now I forgot. It was actually a pretty good day too! :p

Tuesday

Today is actually pretty slow since the only person who has NOT cancelled their classes with me is Hasegawa-sensei. Damn those tests, eh? I’m actually a pretty happy camper though, cuz I have a cold, and normally Tuesdays are 5-classes days…

2^nd period was regular English with 3-5, with me just playing the English parrot at the front, so it was of course boring as hell and nothing exciting happened. OH! But before class, while I was walking in the 3^rd year hallway, Takaya and Ryota (from 3-4) were dicking around and Takaya went “help me!” and started walking stealthily behind me… (like, at a crouch and moving his hands like when you’re skiing…) and I turned around and asked him “who are you hiding from?” but he couldn’t understand and I didn’t know how to say “hide” in Japanese. Then Ryota decided that this was the funniest thing in the world, so he decided to go place himself right behind Takaya and imitate him, doing the same exact retarded “stealth” walk… they followed me nearly all the way to 3-5 like that… lol.

5^th period was regular English with 3-2, which again was a bore, but it had its interesting moments since – of course – it’s 3-2. First up, a group of girls ambushed me on the way to the classroom and we started chatting (with Ayumi declaring her undying love for me again) and then they were trying to teach me this slang word which means “single” and it was something like “real-yu” but I really didn’t get it. Then they were like “oh! You should ask Daisuke if he’s realyu!” and at that very moment, Daisuke showed up and they were like “come here! come here!” and pushed me onto him and I just refused to do it… lol. Honestly I didn’t even understand what they wanted me to say and I was super embarrassed. Poor Daisuke was just completely confused.

During class, while the kids were working on their handouts (but a bunch of them had already finished) I went to scold Kota cuz he was studying math. We started chatting and then I said I was really bad at Math. He started pulling each one of his textbooks (and of course, by that point Dan was turned around in his seat and participating to the conversation too) and asking me if I was good at that subject. P.E? No. Science? No. Japanese? No. (They’re all laughing at me by this point) Social Studies? Ok. “Oh really? How about History?” Dan asks me, and I nod. I really liked history in High School. Then Dan goes (in Japanese) “wait a minute, she probably doesn’t study Japanese history…” lol. So they started asking me about the history of Canada. Then Kota asked me when the history of Canada started so I said “around 1600?” (yeah, I suck at history now… but I was good at it in school!! XD) and he scoffed and said Japan’s history was much older. After teaching them what “B.C.” meant (they were really into it!) they said that Japan’s history started about 3000 years B.C. lol. Anyways, it was a funny conversation that was interrupted by Hasegawa-sensei wanting to correct the paper… oops.

At the end of class, Daisuke waved me over and told me I was crazy. Then he laughed and said “You crazy today. You made a mistake”. There was the word “Argentine” in the textbook and I said it wrong. Cuz honestly, how the fuck should I know it was “ar-jent-een” and not “ar-jen-tyne”? But apparently he thought it was hilarious. So I told him “you know English’s not my first language” and he went “it’s not?!” with this stunned look on his face, “what is it?” so I told him it was French, and he was all impressed… it’s funny cuz I tell my kids every year that I speak French, and they always forget. :p

Wednesday

Only had one class today and it was with 2-1… Sadly, nothing super exciting happened, other than the usually dickery with the 2-1 boys, and perhaps a bit too much fan-servicing on my part… oh well! :p

Thursday & Friday

Those days were mid-year-seminar (which has been renamed something stupider this year, but I can’t be bothered looking it up), which is basically a two-day conference for JETs all over the prefecture. This is fun and useful in your first year… by the time your second year rolls around, you’re already bored, so imagine having to go for a 4^th time… JOY! Although it’s fun to see those other people you never get to see, it’s such a bore, and honestly, I’d rather be at school.

Sorry this week wasn’t very blog-worthy! Peace out!